Unforgivable
by Damashi
Summary: Draco Malfoy learns to kill.


This is a bit of an old fic, but I edited it a little. There are probably still a lot of typos.

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_In all the wizarding world there are three curses that are feared and loathed beyond every other spell ever created. Any use of them is strictly forbidden for obvious reasons. They are the Curse of Obedience, the Curse of Torture, and the Curse of Death. One of the most notorious examples of abuse of these forbidden spells occurred in 1637, when—_

Draco Malfoy snapped the book shut with a frown of disgust. He should have known textbooks wouldn't help him with anything; this one didn't even list the incantations for the curses, let alone the finer points of using them. Of course he had expected that finding such information would be difficult, but he had hoped to come across at least _something_ useful.

One single book in the library had told the incantations, but that was of no use at all. He had learned the words two years ago in Defense Against the Dark Arts class (it was a pity the teacher was no longer at the school and also currently lacked a soul; having a Death Eater on the grounds could have proved terribly useful with the right manipulation), but had not learned anything more. After all, Dumbledore would certainly not have tolerated any teacher (assumed Auror or not) instructing the students in the Forbidden Curses; simply showing them had probably been toeing the line in itself.

But show them the teacher had, and Draco shivered just remembering, a trace of a twisted smile venturing across his thin lips. While his classmates had stared at the suddenly dead form of the spider on the desk in shock and horror, Draco had felt a small thrill run through him as his fingers itched to reach out and touch the corpse.

Most of all, though, he wanted to be able to do that…to kill at will.

So, for once in his life, Draco Malfoy set out to do something difficult on his own, neither telling anyone at all of his efforts nor asking for any assistance. Suddenly, learning to use the two simple words "Avada Kedavra" stood out in great importance in his life, something he _had_ to do. Use of such a curse was the sign of a Death Eater, a sign that he could possibly reach the expectations his parents had. To kill would make him a man and would affirm his position as heir to the rights of the followers of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Parentage was one thing, but the Dark Lord truly sought talent in those he favored. Talent. That was what Draco, who had always found success almost solely through his Father's influence, suddenly desired to show. He would prove that he could be something more than a family ornament and tool.

But the entire school offered no help at all (he had even purloined a seventh year's Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook to check) and he decided it was something he would have to figure out on his own. It had been done before, of course. How else did spells come about except with careful experimentation? And Draco already had a slight advantage; he knew the incantation, and all that was left was to find the proper method of wielding it.

So Draco began to toy with the words when he was alone, saying them over and over beneath his blankets at night and to the rare emptiness of deserted halls or classrooms when he could find solitude. It wasn't easy, of course. First was the problem of Crabbe and Goyle's perpetual presence, but he made a habit of leaving the Great Hall early while they were still eating for a brief interval or practice. Once he skipped dinner entirely, but Pansy expressed a simpering abundance of concern at his absence, so he decided to be present for at least a bit of every meal. It was safer that way, too; if he missed too much, it would only be so long before a teacher became suspicious. _That _wouldn't do. Suspicious teachers watched with stifling closeness, which was only advantageous if they were suspicious of Potter. And, on a sickeningly practical note, advanced spells were only more difficult on an empty stomach.

Draco worked with more diligence than he had ever applied to any school-related task. For the most part, his drilling was wandless while he practiced the incantation and tried to find the exact intonation. He had heard it once before, but only once, and so he couldn't recall exactly how it had sounded. For that reason, the nearly-empty Slytherin boys' dormitory occasionally knew a lone voice speaking to the emptiness.

"AVAda keDAvra! …Avaaaada kedavraaaaa! …Avda kedavara! …AvaDA kedavRA! Avada KEDavra! …Avadakedavra! …Abracada…er…avader..ah… Avema…no…avadAH kedvrah!"

Then his fellow classmates would pour into the room, chattering and commiserating over homework, and Draco would slip away unnoticed into his bed and draw the curtains shut. He'd lie there, looking at the canopy above, holding his wand lightly in his slender fingers and feeling the tingling at the tips as he imagined what it would be like to actually be able to kill something. What would death look like? He had never seen it before, despite the fact that his father was a Death Eater.

The words of the incantation never sounded quite right, though; it always seemed as if one syllable was pronounced ever so slightly wrong, but he did not know which one. So as he lay shrouded in the embrace of the bed curtains, he thought also on what death would sound like. At first he thought of himself in oh-so-many years, lying feebly on his bed, the strength seeping away into a dark coldness as the candles nearby flickered and faded. Draco pushed away the thought with a slight shudder. It was not an image he wanted to dwell on, and it occurred to him that that also was not the death he wished to wield.

So he thought on death again and on using it. This time he saw houses crumbling into frolicking flames as shapes moved through the erratically dancing shadows, some gliding swiftly and others maneuvering deliberately. He saw the streaks of darkness where ash and dirt had adhered to the trails of tears on the faces of the women and children. He saw the mixture of terror and hatred on the faces of the men, saw their mouths open in the fury of a cornered, hunted wild beast, saw them fall in the green light of wand magic, saw the women and children cry out…

Draco opened his eyes and smiled ever so slightly. So the sound of death was a scream.

Yet that discovery in itself was a problem. He always, always, always practiced in secret, which was difficult in itself without having to scream the incantation for an illegal curse. Draco tried to instead speak in a low voice that still held menacing and adrenaline, but ended up feeling rather foolish all in all. He supposed that to properly use such a voice, one needed just the right circumstances; it was not something that could easily be faked.

Every now and then he tried compromising by yelling the curse, but each time he did made him so fearful of detection he didn't dare linger where he stood, whether he perceived any approaching authority or not.

Once he nearly tripped over Mrs. Norris while fleeing a practice scene. Her glowing eyes boring into him very nearly startled him to death, but he realized, his heart still throbbing in his ears, that she was a cat and wouldn't know the Killing Curse even if she _could_ talk to tell Filch on him. Even so, it was all he could do not to kick her for giving him such a scare. He stood glaring at her for a moment as she stared back, then turned with a flurry of billowing robes and stalked off to find Crabbe and Goyle. If he couldn't practice any more, at least he would get his lackeys and find some other way to make trouble.

He had little chance to practice much after that. Midterms were coming up and the weather was growing colder, which meant that students were spending their time more and more indoors and isolated rooms or corridors became increasingly difficult to find. Soon he was so desperate to escape from the highly stressed atmosphere of the common room and into the sanctuary of his death hunt that he barely had to fake ire when he engaged in a pointless but furious argument with Blaise. It was a good excuse to grab a winter cloak, a scarf, and a hat and storm out of the castle. In the back of his mind, Draco rather hoped Crabbe and Goyle didn't do anything too horrible to Blaise; it hadn't really been the boy's fault, after all.

Once out in the cold clear air with the feel of fresh snow crunching under his feet, he felt his irritability begin to ebb slowly away. He watched his breath drift from him in diaphanous wisps of mist and listened to the wintry silence. A trace of anger, however, still lingered, holding steadfastly to his heart. What he was upset about, he couldn't be sure, but the feeling was quite certainly there.

Hoping for a distraction, he pulled out his wand and decided to try the curse with actual magic. His hand trembled ever so slightly as he grasped the frail piece of wood.

"Avada kedavra!" His voice quavered and cracked with nervousness. Even if his incantation had not come remotely close to a scream, it seemed to have broken the empty silence with the volume of a banshee screech. Not even a spark had emerged from the end of his wand, though.

He looked about hurriedly, and then walked closer to the Forbidden Forest. Even if he had no desire to venture into it, at least the trees would offer some concealment. He tried it again.

"Avada kedavra!"

Something inside him gave a prodigious leap as a small mass of white sparks collected at the tip of his wand, shot off, and dissolved. Whatever was inside him, though, fell back just as quickly. The light was supposed to be a jet of brilliant green, not a few snow-colored particles. Even so, he couldn't dampen the little bit of elation that welled up within him; he had actually produced _something._

Half a smile playing on his face, his teeth clamped together in excitement, he tried again, motioning with his wand as if he were spearing someone in the heart. "Avada kedavra!"

A spectacular nothingness rewarded his efforts.

He paused and stared at the end of his wand, trying very hard to understand why the curse suddenly refused to work again. He brandished his wand once more, the incantation on his lips. As before, he received no response. Now completely baffled, he tried again and received the same result.

He tried for half an hour with not so much as a spark. Frustrated and now almost angry, he jabbed his wand with a force that jerked his arm unpleasantly and bellowed _"Avada kedavra!"_

To his extreme surprise, a sizeable flash of yellow light exploded from the wand tip and singed the nearest tree. For a moment, he stood motionless. Then, slowly, he put his other hand on the grip of his wand and gaped at it, then at the charred mark on the tree before him. True, the flash had been yellow instead of green, but that in itself was a marked improvement.

"Who's there?"

Draco froze as a large figure made its way through the trees towards him, carrying something over its back.

"What're yeh doin' out here? Aren't yeh supposed ter be in th' castle with th' other students?"

Draco relaxed with a scowl; it was only the gamekeeper, coming out of the forest with a large sack of who-knows-what over his shoulder. Draco didn't care to guess. Instead, he drew himself up with an icy, haughty glare and gave a retort in his usual fashion. "What I am doing and my reasons for being here are none of your business. I simply wish to be alone, and you've not right to question me."

"But yer not supposed ter be out after dark," put in Hagrid reasonably—something Draco did not appreciate. "C'mon. I'll take yeh back up ter the castle."

"I can manage adequately on my own," snapped Draco.

"Manage ter get inter trouble," said Hagrid calmly and escorted the now-sullen student back to the main building. Draco felt his fingers stray to his wand as he glowered at the gamekeeper's broad back, but he did realize that even when he had succeeded in making something happen, the curse had not been nearly at full strength and to attempt anything now would be purely foolish.

Fortunately for everyone, the holidays did not take too much time to arrive (though many students still felt them long overdue), which meant that Draco would be going home for a few weeks. Not that it made much difference to him—home was as boring as school—but now the time off would hopefully give him some more practice opportunities. After all, his mansion would not be swarming with students every hour of the day and night.

In fact, the house seemed more gloomily empty than he had ever remembered it. True, Father was always away, especially with the Dark Lord's plans slowly being put into action, but Father had never been around much anyways. Perhaps it was the knowledge of approaching war that made the atmosphere so desolate. Once he grew accustomed to it, though, Draco was thankful for the emptiness. It was no longer a titanic feat to find a room where he could drill unnoticed for hours at a time. Naturally, students were not supposed to use magic over the holidays, but Draco was not at all worried. The Malfoy mansion knew quite well how to keep its secrets.

To his annoyance, he lost some practice time when he was required to come be a gentleman and greet Bellatrix Lestrange, who was staying with them for a few days. He had never particularly liked the woman, but she was an associate of his father and, of course, a devoted follower of the Dark Lord, so Draco remained indifferent rather than spiteful. As it was, once they had gotten past the formalities, she mostly conversed with his mother or kept to her own devices.

He did, however, gain something invaluable from her stay. It was an accident, of course; as he had the misfortune of being the same age as Harry Potter, his father's associates viewed him as nothing more than a naïve child and did not care to share the slightest bit of information with him. But Draco did still manage to overhear Bellatrix speaking briefly of the night Harry Potter had faced a large group of Death Eaters in the Ministry's Department of Mysteries. She seemed in quite high spirits. "He came after me after I killed my pathetic cousin," she was saying with a scornful chuckle. "Furious, he was, and quite amusingly so. And do you know what he did?"

Draco heard a pause as Bellatrix sipped from the glass in her hand, not seeing him in the shadows just beyond the doorway.

"What?" asked Narcissa politely, slightly curious.

"He attempted the Cruciatus Curse!" exclaimed Bellatrix, laughing unpleasantly. Draco could almost sense a matching amused smile crossing over his mother's face.

"Little fool."

"But isn't he?" responded Bellatrix, the mirth still evident in her voice. "Ridiculous. I told him right off he couldn't do it, the little amateur. Told him you have to feel the bitter hatred, actually want and enjoy the pain in the victim. Stupid, pretentious little _saint._" She took another swallow. "He'd never be able to pull it off."

"Of course not," agreed Narcissa with satisfaction.

Neither woman noticed Draco gliding off into the darkness of the hallway.

Of course. Why had he not thought of it before? How could he have been so dense as to suppose that he could cast a deadly curse simply by waving his wand just right and regurgitating the correct words? This was no _Wingardium Leviosa_, and he should have realized that. Hadn't the imposter Moody said himself that the curse took powerful magic? And what greater power than emotions? Those were certainly what he played upon when he tormented Potter and his pathetic friends. So Draco followed Bellatrix's unintentional advice: he began to use the feelings within him in his spell-casting, winnowing out all the resentment he had bottled up and finding anger where he had known it resided.

He gathered the humiliation and sting of never being able the beat Potter at anything (not to mention the Unspeakable Ferret Incident.) He collected the hatred for mudbloods and Muggles his parents had taught him even before he had learned to read. He grasped the bitterness in his soul at his mother for always being so distant and for loving her social life more than she loved him, and at his father for never being there when Draco needed a man to look up to. But what welled up the thickest within him was the glittering, venomous, emerald hatred for himself, his weaknesses, his failures, and his cowardly cruelties.

It worked — the cliché seemed oddly appropriate for the situation — like a charm. Once he had learned to harness his bitterness (which took a little while; Draco had always been one who was not easy to control, and for once this worked to his disadvantage), every attempt was rewarded by some sort of light. Often, it was still white or yellow, but the illumination _was_ growing increasingly greener. He had still not nearly come close to perfecting it, but he did feel it was time to begin practicing on real live things (though not people yet) and began looking for victims no one would miss. That ruled out house elves; his mother dearly valued their labor and would be rather upset if he maimed or killed one or two. Besides, they were a painfully finite supply.

He took to trying various types of rat traps and even tried skulking about the kitchens in search of cockroaches, but had little luck. The house was too pristinely neat and he simply couldn't bring himself to be entirely enthusiastic about searching out household pests. It just didn't seem dignified.

So a few days after Christmas, he told his mother he was going out, snagged a handful of Floo powder and found himself soon wandering the long, twisting ways of Knockturn Alley. It made him feel oddly at home, seeing the bright, dead eyes so like his own staring gloomily at him from the cover of cloaks and shadows. He browsed the shops, keeping a careful hand on the Galleons in his pocket, ever making sure they did not go suddenly and strangely missing. His other hand held his wand where it was unseen but ready.

He studied smudged glass boxes teeming with shiny writhing cockroaches, cages of mice with pointed teeth and glowing red eyes, terrariums of two-headed rats and here and there a weasel spitting scarlet acid that caused whatever it touched to smoke and wither. He frowned. Such creatures would work for practice, but they would be difficult to bring home without facing awkward questions from his mother.

Feeling a bit discouraged, he cast about for another possible opportunity and caught sight of a branching passageway labeled Itern Alley by a faded and rather crooked sign. It was unpleasantly dark and gave Draco, despite the fact that he was the son of a Death Eater, an odd shiver, so he settled for examining the odd assortment of counterfeit relics and various other magical artifacts. He eyed a set of Asian-looking scrolls that, according to the label, would summon a giant slug, frog, or snake each; summoning a massive snake could be useful, but Draco had no idea how he would command it, not being a Parcelmouth. Next was a dingy white lace handkerchief that supposedly turned into a butterfly or bird and helped its owner find people. He was beginning to think that he would find absolutely nothing useful when his eye fell upon a plain, battered wooden flute. Its label was coated in dust, and when he brushed at it, the ink also swept to the side in tiny grains.

"The Pied Piper's flute," said a wheezy voice at Draco's elbow.

Draco turned to see the shop owner standing next to him, partly bowed in an obsequious gesture. He was a thin man with bony hands, little hair, and tired, bright eyes.

"You know the Pied Piper's story, don't you?" continued the man.

"Of course," replied Draco brusquely. "Every child hears it from his nurse in the somber hours before sleep."

"But not from his parents, eh?" queried the shopkeeper cryptically, chuckling to himself. "See, what they don't tell you is what happened after the Piper took the children into the mountain. He took a wrong turn, though, and managed to end up in Transylvania. Was a real mess, it was; the Ministry there had just quelled the vampire problem, and then the kids showed up, all nice and innocent, and next thing you know, the problem's a hundred times worse. The Piper had had enough after that. He sold his flute to me and went off to live on his own on a houseboat." 1

Draco did his best not to gawk at the man. "Wasn't that several hundred years ago?"

The man simply grinned. "It's what you want, though, isn't it? It's the sort of thing you've been looking for."

Draco paused. "I don't see how you could pretend to know anything about my business," he said lightly with a dash of the Malfoy arrogance in his voice.

"Oh? I thought you'd want a way to provide yourself with an endless supply of rats, however many you want at a time…"

Again Draco was hard pressed not to look surprised. It would be the ideal way to practice, being able to call rats to kill when and only when he needed them. Of course, he had to be careful of what he was buying. "Will it work properly for just anyone? I have next to no training in music."

"Don't need it," said the shopkeeper.

"I _don't_ want to find myself being followed about by a crowd of sickeningly gleeful children instead of rats," said Draco warningly.

"Try it," said the shopkeeper, placing it in his hands with the same sycophantic grin.

Draco studied him suspiciously, and then examined the flute, fastidiously cleaning it on his robe before putting it to his lips. He blew gently into it and was rewarded with a clear, crystalline note. His fingers began to move of their own accord, pulling out a brisk tune rather unlike anything he had heard before.

He removed his fingers after only a few measures, though. Several rats had emerged from beneath cabinets and in tangles of knotted rags to gather timidly about Draco, creeping closer. One rat had even come in the half-open door to investigate the loveliness. Draco smiled slightly down at the beady eyes looking curiously at him.

He argued over the price for a while with the storekeeper and left with the flute next to his wand in his robes. When he returned home, no one had even noticed his absence.

He began to practice in earnest after that, and the household, if it ever paused to wonder at the sound at first, quickly grew accustomed to the voice of a flute here and there in the farthest reaches of the mansion.

The curse did not begin to work immediately, of course, now that it actually had live victims. The first rat writhed in such pain that at first Draco wondered if he had cast the Cruciatus Curse by mistake, though he knew he hadn't. Other mice took long minutes to die—one took a full hour before expiring miserably. None of the deaths resulted in an unmarked corpse.

Draco began frequently moving his practice areas so that the stains of rodent blood and offal did not become too pronounced and noticeable. For once he was glad that he wore black robes on which crimson made no visible mark.

The excitement of killing quickly dwindled into disgust and discouragement. Draco tired of waiting far too long for the rats to perish; he wanted the thrill of instantaneous death and had no patience for the tedium of agony. He was still doing something wrong, but the question was what. He continued to watch the rats die their gradual deaths, more out of what he felt was duty than pleasure. There was something he had missed in gathering within him the components of the curse, and he was determined to find out what. What of death had he failed to discover?

It was only on the second to last day of Christmas holiday that Draco found an idea nudging at the back of his consciousness as he replayed the latest rat's last moments in his mind through a silent and painfully unhurried dinner. (Bellatrix had left already, and though Draco had not been sorry to see her depart, the house seemed all the more dead for her absence.) Though the rodent had squealed shrilly for an extended amount of time after being hit by the curse, it had also fallen silent in its last seconds, twitching slightly until it had resignedly gone limp.

He spent dinner pondering why this observation was at all significant and continued to mull over the problem through dessert and as he climbed the winding stairways to his room.

The door clicked shut behind him and it all became some oddly clear he wondered why he had not seen it before. The sound of dying could be a scream, but the sound of _death_ was a mere whisper, the sound of a last breath slipping into silence.

The first rat to answer his flute call that evening died swiftly with a flash of green light. It still went with a copious amount of blood rather than rolling over unmarked, but the improvement overall was more than enough to tell Draco he was nearly proficient. It was only a matter of a little more time and practice.

But he didn't have that time. The next day he spent with his mother, packing for the return to school and enduring her endless fussing over him. Oddly enough, she hadn't paid him half as much attention while the Lestrange woman was visiting. But Draco endured it for a day and feigned an affectionate farewell as he boarded the train and made his way back to school. He sat brooding over his wand, practicing the curse in his mind and letting the hatred that fueled it stretch and strengthen in him. Crabbe and Goyle did not notice anything but sat staring blankly out the window as usual.

School remained mostly uneventful, and Draco continued to practice in his free time. Though he killed more and more frequently, he remained as cautious as ever, fighting the growing urge within him to act recklessly. He became even more careful after hearing Filch talking gleefully to Mrs. Norris about how well the new rat poison was working and several female students complained of the dead rats in the corridors.

Draco made sure to destroy some of the corpses after he finished a practice session, though was too time-consuming to take care of them all. Besides, an hour of practicing Avada Kedavra usually left him exhausted. He had nearly perfected the technique now, though; only rarely did the rats ever take more than a moment to die, and always there was no mark at all on the body to testify as to the method of killing. Draco was not sure whether or not he would be able to kill people yet, but decided it was high time he tried his work on different creatures.

A few days later, there was a great commotion in one of the corridors from a group of several Gryffindors. Professor Snape strode up to the crowd to see Professor McGonagall trying to calm everyone down and find out exactly why everyone was so excited anyways. "What's going on?" snapped Snape, immediately extinguishing the jumbled conversation.

"Longbottom's toad has died, that's all," said Professor McGonagall wearily, looking as if she thought this much more trouble than it was worth.

"Not died," broke in Ron Weasley furiously, "was murdered! It was perfectly healthy yesterday!"

"Don't interrupt," snapped Professor Snape, catching himself a breath away from deducting ten points from Gryffindor right in front of Professor McGonagall. "Let me see the toad."

Neville, his pale, round face streaked with tears though his eyes were now dry, held out the stiffened form that had been his toad. Snape examined it, his face betraying no thoughts at all.

"It is unmarked, Weasley. What makes you say it was killed?"

"Could have been poisoned," put in Ron a bit sulkily, not liking that Snape had almost openly sneered at his idea.

Snape scrutinized the body again. "There is no evidence that it was poisoned," he replied evenly.

"Well, you can't just tell by looking, can you?" demanded Seamus Finnigan.

"I am the Potions Master," retorted Snape, which speedily squelched all argument. "It is possible to poison something or someone and leave no apparent signs of cause on the body, but those are potions that are highly difficult to make and rare. I doubt anyone would waste them on a mere toad."

Tiring already of the Gryffindor's complaints and outrageous theories, Snape turned on his heel and strode off, his outward appearance betraying none of the thoughts swirling around in his mind. The symptoms of death matched those on the rats he had found lying in the hallways of the dungeons: unmarked, no indication of poison or any other method of killing.

Snape recognized the signs. He had seen them innumerable times before, having once been a Death Eater himself. Someone was using the Killing Curse in Hogwarts.

Snape notified the headmaster immediately, but Dumbledore's instructions carried no trace of panic. "We will wait and be watchful," he said simply. "We will not publicly announce the danger so that the students will remain calm. This is not the work of a top Death Eater; one of experience would not be practicing on rats. It is the sign of one inexperienced at working for Voldemort, which means the threat is not dire, but it does merit attention."

Weeks passed and Draco continued his practices in careful secrecy. He had been rather skittish the first few days after his successful killing of Trevor the toad, but no one had caught him or even seemed particularly wary of a killer. He longed to try his skills on a human, but a student or teacher death would more than definitely spark a thorough investigation.

He quietly continued his mass killing of rats, all the while itching for something bigger to destroy. That is, he did until events took a rather unpleasant turn.

He had been examining the corpse of the latest rat in an empty classroom, leaning over it and drinking in the sight when a firm hand clamped down on his shoulder. He whipped his head around, though the grip prevented him from fully turning to face the one who had caught him. He found himself staring into Professor Snape's grim face.

"So this is the school's killer," he said softly.

Draco's wand hand moved suddenly, but he found himself quickly staring at Snape's own wand, pointed steadily between his eyes.

"Don't even think about it. You're hardly the only person at Hogwarts who knows how to kill, and I am probably far more experienced."

Draco stared up at his teacher mutely, unable to find anything to say. So often those eyes had looked on him with biased favor, but now they were cold and empty. There was no sign of approval, only something that could almost be loathing and, though Draco doubted it, perhaps the slightest tinge of what might be regret.

"This is a matter out of my hands," continued Snape. "I will take you to the headmaster."

The corridors seemed infinitely long, though Draco had walked them untold times before. Something was different about them now as Snape steered him around corners and down staircases. They no longer seemed a place Draco felt he could call home, and even the curious glances of the paintings were somehow menacing.

The two stopped in front of the great gargoyle staring at nothing with its great stone eyes. "Pepper imp," said Snape gravely, and the statue moved before Draco's eyes and a staircase awaited their ascent. Draco barely remembered any of the climb, or the painful awkward delay as Snape informed Dumbledore of the situation. All else dissolved when the headmaster turned his piercing blue eyes on the boy before him, searching for an answer to this problem.

"Did you kill the rats and Mr. Longbottom's toad with the forbidden Killing Curse?" he asked Draco quietly.

Draco looked back and found he could not lie to that face, no matter how much he hated the sight of it. "Yes."

"Have you killed anything else?"

"Insects. A stray cat." The answers drew themselves painfully and shamefully from his mouth.

"Any people, Muggle or wizard?"

"No," replied Draco, bitterness rising within him. He had come so far, and yet done nothing at all. He had proved nothing, neither to himself nor to those around him.

"Are you working under the orders of Lord Voldemort or any of his possible supporters, your father included?"

"No," came the reply again. Draco gritted his teeth. He had lost his chance, and not even for the Dark Lord; he had never entered the service.

Dumbledore paused at that answer, his eyes probing into Draco's as if searching for the truth. He said nothing, however, and seemed satisfied with the answer.

"Are you able to use either of the other two curses?"

"No," said Draco once more, something unidentifiable welling within him.

Dumbledore fell silent, almost brooding. He motioned Draco and Snape to chairs; Draco sat obediently, but Snape remained standing rigidly behind him.

"You are aware," said Dumbledore softly, his voice heavy, "of the seriousness of this matter?"

Draco nodded.

"Do you recall the consequences?"

"A lifetime in Azkaban," answered Draco automatically before the full weight of that had hit him, "for the use of a Forbidden Curse against another human being." He stopped, horror gripping at him.

Dumbledore nodded slowly. "It is. You have two facts working in your favor: one, that you did not actually use it on another human, and, two, that you did not do it to further Lord Voldemort's plans."

Draco sat in silence.

"Why _did_ you use Avada Kedavra on school grounds?"

Draco gave no response for a while. The despair within him seemed to wrap itself about his heart, trapping it and crushing it. "I taught myself," he said slowly. "I wanted to prove that I could do something like that, prove that I was more than the other students, that I had power they had never conceived."

Snape looked down at the empty face of the boy sitting in front of him and something within him clenched. A memory of a similar once-boy shooting down flies with his wand in empty loneliness rose in his mind and he pushed it hurriedly away. Only Dumbledore caught the flicker in the Potions Master's face.

"This requires deliberation," said the headmaster quietly. "Severus, if you would kindly step outside with me…. Draco, please wait here."

Draco soon found himself alone in the office. The portraits would not look at him, and his eye soon fell upon the crimson of Fawkes, sitting quietly on its perch. He stared dully at it for a while, daring it to turn his gaze, but it did not.

"I heard you healed Saint Potter," he said suddenly. "Twice," he added with bitterness. He got up and walked toward the bird. "I suppose that means you won't make a single move to help me. Not that you can; I haven't any hurts."

Fawkes returned his gaze serenely, then opened its beak and let out a pure, quavering not.

Draco's breath caught; whatever had welled up inside him seemed to burst, and suddenly his vision had blurred dangerously. He swallowed with difficulty and blinked several times to clear his eyes, but to no avail. Instead, he studied the ornate carvings on the ceiling, trying to keep the salty droplets from trickling down his cheeks; he would not cry, no matter what happened. Always, he had to remember that he was a Malfoy and all that meant. Even in disgrace, he would not humiliate himself.

Fawkes released another not, and then another, and soon it had broken out into full song. Draco felt suddenly tired, and he sat slowly down on the cool stone floor by the phoenix's perch. A thought slipped into his consciousness through the confusion of his mind; Avada Kedavra was more than just an illegal or forbidden curse. It was an Unforgivable Curse.

He should have known it earlier; "unforgivable" had been written in Dumbledore and Snape's eyes when they looked at him. Draco was still sitting there when the professors reentered the room, his face blank.

Fawkes continued to sing softly.

_Owari_

1: While looking into the fairy tale for a writing project last year, I found that one version of the legend did indeed have the kids and the Piper ending up in Transylvania; I thought it was vaguely amusing.


End file.
